Speaking at a Tuesday address, Prime Minister Narendra Modi put forward India as a dependable partner for nations navigating an unsettled global economy, while noting that supply chains, energy, critical minerals, payment systems, and technology had increasingly become tools of geopolitical leverage.

Speaking at the Bloomberg New Economy Forum in New Delhi — convening on Indian soil for the first time — Modi observed that the interconnected supply chains and resource networks shaped over many years of globalisation had come to represent points of exposure for nations contending with disruptions across trade, energy, and access to essential materials. The gathering draws executives, officials, and capital allocators into conversation about the economic shifts reordering global markets.

Modi described a period in which overlapping strains — the Covid-19 pandemic, armed conflicts across multiple regions, and mounting obstacles to trade, energy access, and the supply of key minerals — had placed the international community under considerable pressure. He contended that the frameworks once built to connect nations, spanning supply chains, energy networks, mineral flows, payment systems, and technology, had since been repurposed as tools of leverage and pressure by those in a position to wield them.

Modi observed that the ties forged through decades of global economic integration carry a potential downside, namely that nations holding sway over key resources and infrastructure can leverage that position to apply pressure on others, and that those same interconnections have in certain cases become points of constraint rather than mutual benefit.

Speaking to the need for reliable access to goods when global pressures mount, Modi called on nations to stand by their supply obligations to partner countries, stressing that trust between trading partners rests on commitments being kept even under strain. He expressed the view that allied nations would remain dependable when support was most needed.

Addressing an audience on the topic of international economic engagement, Modi put forward the position that India's development trajectory is oriented toward mutual growth with the broader global community, adding through a direct quotation that his country's growth does not come at any other nation's expense. The position put forward was that pursuing national economic gain at another country's expense held no place in its priorities, with the focus instead resting on collective responses to challenges the world holds in common.

Positioning the country as both a growing economic force and a contributor to global needs, Modi noted that roughly one in five affordable generic medicines supplied worldwide traces back to Indian production. India's approach to digital identity and payment infrastructure has drawn attention as a reference point for countries building their own systems. He noted that whenever global demand for skilled professionals arises, India's younger workforce tends to be among those sought out. Over 2,000 global capability centres operating across India — each delivering services to businesses around the world — were among the points Modi drew attention to.

One strand running through the address centred on what Modi called the "power to empower" — a framing built around the idea that advances in technology ought to open doors for large numbers of people rather than channel gains toward a narrow, already-advantaged group, with Modi adding that technology now functions as a form of power in its own right. He described innovation as a form of power, then shifted focus to a question he considered more pressing — not who holds it, but how that power gets directed and by whom.

Pointing to the digital transformation underway across India, Modi argued that the more pressing matter lay not in the existence of technological power but in how that power gets directed. He noted that lower mobile data costs had opened up digital learning for students in smaller cities, put new customers within reach of village shopkeepers, and given young people a pathway into online courses. Access to information, he said, translates directly into the capacity to act.

Among the points he raised was India's payments infrastructure — a unified digital network through which roadside traders and multinational enterprises alike can process transactions on equal footing. Modi referenced a platform built during the pandemic years as one example of how digital tools have helped extend government services to a wider public. Knowledge of digital public infrastructure, built through hands-on deployment across its own territory, was being passed along by India to nations elsewhere — with those in the Global South receiving particular attention — so each could tailor solutions to their own circumstances.

Turning to the topic of innovation, Modi pointed out that the startup count had climbed to more than 250,000 — a figure he contrasted with the few hundred ventures that existed before 2014. Roughly half operated out of smaller cities and towns, and women held a director or partner role at just over 45 per cent of the firms surveyed.

Addressing what he described as worldwide economic instability, Modi pointed to data on domestic growth and a series of policy changes as indicators of how the country has weathered external pressures. Pointing to an economy that expanded by 7.8 per cent during the April-to-June quarter of 2026-27, he also drew attention to foreign exchange reserves that had climbed past the $700 billion mark. A narrowing of the country's current account deficit from the figures posted over a decade earlier was among the points he raised.

Modi described the banking sector as being in stronger shape than it had seen in years, while also laying out measures the government intended to pursue to draw more business investment into the country. Among the policy measures he pointed to were the Goods and Services Tax framework, an overhauled insolvency regime, and the consolidation of 29 separate labour statutes into a set of four unified codes.

The prime minister touched on plans to remove criminal penalties from hundreds of petty business-related infractions. He described economic and structural reforms as a core commitment of his administration, stating that such reforms were not being pursued out of necessity but as a matter of deliberate policy choice.